


The Lannister Card

by SandwichesYumYum



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, For Nurdles, Modern AU, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-03-30 00:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandwichesYumYum/pseuds/SandwichesYumYum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister and Brienne of Tarth. A short, silly, modern AU piece. Is a gift for Nurdles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coffee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nurdles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nurdles/gifts).



> Nurdles, I did a silly thing for you with the thing, as an expression of my extreme gratitude for that very thing. There may be a thing that happens in this thing that I did not know, at the time of my hurried scribbling, has happened to you recently. It is a mere coinkidink, I promise you. Anyhoo, enough of the things. Please accept my thanks and my warmest congratulations. I am very, very proud of you. :)
> 
> My thanks too, to dearest RoseHeart for her supreme encouragement, though as it is show night over there, I must make it clear that all mistakes are my own here. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

 

THE LANNISTER CARD - COFFEE

 

Brienne moans lowly, a rumble in her throat as booted toes nudge at her shoulder. It is only the fact that this foot has done the same many times before that stops her from lashing out in response. She screws her eyes more tightly shut instead. "I'm sleeping." 

Her weary utterance is ignored, and a lone hand is brought down to tap her shoulder in poor consolation. "You're talking, so clearly you've taken up fibbing in the last eight hours or so. Come on, Brienne, get up. You can't be comfortable down there."

She isn't, what with her bed having collapsed beneath her, but Brienne can't give him even this small victory. She ignores the sharp pain in her left hip-bone, pressing hard as it is into wooden floor, and pulls a pillow over her head. "Go away."

"I have coffee." She knows it. She can almost smell it. Damn him.

"What time is it?" she mutters.

"Eight. Nearly."

"Eight?" she asks, pulling the corner of the pillow away a little and cracking one eye open to see a perfectly straight shin, supported by calf-muscles she happens to know are unblemished, covered by very expensive trousers. "Should I be checking you for a fever?" He is not a morning person either, no matter how many dawns they had to meet in the years gone by, when they served together.

A truly beautiful man drops to floor, folding those legs while he picks up and waves a takeaway coffee cup in front of her face. "Funny," he says, as she gets the first full waft of her morning ambrosia. He looks at the dark cup inquiringly. "Maybe _I_ should drink this?"

Her arm flails out without thought. "Give. _Jaime_."

He only goes for three small attempts at keeping it away from her wildly grasping fingers before letting her grab it from him. Not quite enough to let it spill over either of them. Then he leans in with a wicked grin, as he helps her balance her prize carefully in her hand whilst she rolls onto her side. "You're hilarious first thing in the morning. If hilarious means intractably grumpy. Did I ever tell you that?"

She starts to pull herself up from the floor, her tired muscles screaming in protest. "Only every day since we met."

Brienne fully sits up with a scowl and drags what she can of the blanket over herself, without being too obvious. Summer is not quite here, and despite being fully dressed, she is cold. The heating in her new home isn't working yet. She takes a sip from the coffee cup and wraps her hands about it, trying to drag what warmth she can in from the thick, black cardboard. There is little enough to be found, but the drink itself is still almost hot and she glories in it. It does help.

She watches Jaime, as he does her. And Jaime says nothing, for a time, which is not like him. Brienne is unsure of his reason for returning at all, so she falls into drinking her coffee; tiny, warm sips mirrored by his doing the same from his own, and she isn't sure what he means by this.

_You didn’t have to come back today._

Yet when he speaks again it is nothing she wouldn't expect. He gestures towards the boxes filling half of the room. "I love what you've done with the place."

_There he is. There is Jaime._

Still, Brienne glares at him. "I've only had time to inflate the mattress and sleep since I carried _everything_ in yesterday."

"Sterling work with the mattress," Jaime says, glancing at the near to flattened bed that has badly failed her. "And I helped, didn't I?"

"Yes, your powers of sarcasm really made the grunt work easier." An empty wrist is waved carelessly at her, and Brienne knows she has not stopped frowning yet. "Sometimes I don't think you regret our former careers nearly as much as you should."

"True," the man who once saved her at such great cost says, but instead of railing at her about his loss, he stares at the space where his hand should be, only to then shrug at her. "I still miss it more than I don't, I suppose. Mostly in the middle of the night."

Brienne almost gathers a laugh to meet _that_ comment, but then finds she can't. It's still too early. "Oh, stop."

"If I must."

Silence falls again and Brienne can feel Jaime staring at her as she reaches out to stab a finger dolefully at the corner of the mattress, which still holds some little air, if not much. She sighs. Her years-long search for a suitable airbed will have to continue, but she has a camping mat, and that will serve for the time being. She looks back up at him with a small, hopeless grunt, grateful that he chooses not to respond, only to find her attention drawn to a box behind his shoulder. "Jaime, why is that box open?"

Jaime’s face is the very picture of innocence, which of course means the absolute opposite. "I first got here at seven,” he explains, sounding entirely reasonable. “You were out cold. I was looking for cups."

"In a box marked 'bedroom'?" Brienne bluntly asks, abandoning her current cup and the warmth of her blanket to rise to her feet and step around him.

"It was early,” Jaime protests as he stands up beside her. “Well, earlier. I wasn't taking any notice of words."

Brienne pushes the lid closed and glances at Jaime warily. "Please tell me you didn't go through my underwear."

She doesn’t believe he would invade her privacy that way in the slightest, yet he doesn’t answer directly, replying instead with a question. "Who packs their clothes into boxes anyway?"

"Many people, Jaime,” Brienne snaps. “Many people who don't have a history of climbing out of a certain woman's bathroom window with half of their clothing in a plastic carrier bag."

Jaime takes no offence, merely smiling up at her as if he hasn’t a worry in the world. "If you don't mind, it's been a while since I've fallen into that flowerbed. And I sometimes wish I'd never told you about it in the first place."

"No. You don't,” Brienne counters, picking up a nearby box and holding it up between them. “Here, cups." She points at the label. "It says 'cups'. See?" She marches over to the small kitchen and deposits it on the side, accompanied by Jaime’s laughter. 

She turns to him with a frown, but he simply waves her back. "Just sit down and finish your coffee, Brienne. We can sort them out once your morning teeth have fallen out."

She crosses her arms across her chest as she ambles over to him, regarding him suspiciously. "My ‘morning teeth’?"

Jaime waits until she is right in front of him to let loose a barrage of words. "Don't wake me up why is it morning you're horrible they're horrible the sunshine is melting me you make really bad personal choices get me some kind of warm beverage before I tear your head off!" All of that impression hastily tumbles out of his mouth in a single breath, and Jaime finishes it with quiet, yet vicious roar. "Your morning teeth could be weaponized to win conflicts, Brienne, but I do believe it would be against all known human rights laws."

Brienne can’t help herself. She smiles at Jaime, though she shakes her head too as she leans down to retrieve her precious beverage. As she stands again, she notices Jaime’s eyes flicker up from her legs, but though she braces herself for a comment or two about her elephantine thighs, none come. She sips at her drink, which is rapidly beginning to grow cooler. She grimaces at it. "So why are you here at this hour, Jaime? Why are you here at all?"

Jaime looks at her as if she has lost the gift of rational thought. "It's 'Bloody Crown' day. We have to get everything set up in time." 

"It's not on for," Brienne gapes down at her wristwatch in utter confusion, "fourteen _hours_ , Jaime. And couldn't you just watch it at home? Your home? The place with the hideously expensive tiling?"

"So says the woman who only goes to thrift stores because she's too proud to ask her father for help. There's nothing wrong with accepting it, Brienne. He adores you."

"You haven't seen his taste in furniture,” Brienne tells him, only to add, “And yes, there might be some pride involved, Mister born-with-an-entire-golden-cutlery-set-in-his-mouth."

"Oh, Brienne. You _are_ on form this morning."

If he is truly trying to irritate her, his cause is lost, as Brienne is briefly stuck imagining a golden and beautiful child, of about two years of age, still spitting out the occasional stray, gleaming spoon. "It's never stopped you talking though," she muses.

"I'm gifted that way,” Jaime says, patting at her arm. “Come on, this place is a heap."

"Thanks,” Brienne says dryly. “But I think fourteen hours is enough time, don't you?"

"Well, we have to sort this mess out,” Jaime says, plucking her now unwanted coffee cup from her fingers and moving to place it next to the box of kitchenware. “And then we have to go get you a new bed."

Brienne shakes her head. "I can't afford a new bed, Jaime."

"It's a good job I can then, isn't it?" He breezes back past her and looks down at the sorry pile from which Brienne has just emerged.

 _Not this again._ "I won't take - "

"Look at this poor, wildly abused item,” Jaime interrupts, turning over the edge of the airbed with his toe. “One night with you and it's given up the ghost."

"Lannister - "

He isn’t intimidated by her tone, which is getting bleaker. "And see? It's put you in a terrible mood. You're playing the Lannister card already, and you've only been awake for a few minutes.” He picks up another small box and heads towards the bathroom. “Don't worry, you can pay me back later. Or not. Whatever.”

"You're going to insist, aren't you?"

He smiles back over his shoulder at her. "I wouldn't say _insist_."

Brienne stays stock still for a solid minute, trying to think of a way of refusing such a loan that wouldn’t seem graceless, but she can’t think of any. And with Jaime, she has long since learned to pick her battlegrounds with care in any case. His mouth has always been quicker than her own. "Thank you,” she calls after him. “I'm still not certain we need fourteen hours though."

"Don't forget the snacks. We have to buy snacks." Jaime’s voice echoes loudly in the bathroom.

"Well, that'll take up at least two hours," Brienne mumbles to herself, unable to forget the despairing face of the poor teenager working in the supermarket who was dispatched no less than three times to try and find Jaime’s favourite crisps in the warehouse last time. 

She is not, however, quiet enough, and Jaime sounds amused at her obvious trepidation at the thought of shopping for food with him. "Are you calling me a fussy eater?"

"I've never met fussier."

He sticks his head out of the bathroom doorway. "At least I wouldn't eat fried snakeskin or chew on crocodile feet, were they offered."

"I have never eaten either!"

"But you _would._ Where should I put your,” he peers down at the can in his hand, “deodorant?"

"It'll all have to go on the windowsill. There's nowhere else.” Then Brienne thinks of the box of tampons packed away with everything else there. “Wait, Jaime. I'll do it." She is too late, it turns out, and the small windowsill is already heaving with various items, one of which has caught Jaime’s interest. Brienne watches him close the toilet seat and sit down, inspecting the bright red tube in his hand. 

"A mud mask?” he asks her. “Is it really made of mud? You _hate_ mud. I remember there was some talk of it getting into crevasses -"

"The talk of crevasses was all your own,” Brienne reminds him. "Give it here."

"No,” he says lightly, flipping the cap open and sniffing cautiously at the contents. Then he squeezes the tube with his thumb until a dollop drops onto his outstretched fingers and tosses the container into the small sink next to him so he can stare at the face mask. He wiggles his fingertips just under his nose to do so.

Brienne picks up the discarded tube and closes it with a soft groan. If Jaime spends as much time as she fears he might nosing through her belongings, the clock may not be on their side after all. "Maybe we'll need _more_ than fourteen hours. Look, you really don't have to stay here for 'The Bloody Crown', Jaime. Not if you don't want to."

He glances up at her, an eyebrow raised. "Of course I do. It's better with you." He gets to his feet and stands directly in front of her. Almost too close. "I'm beginning to think that everything is." Then Jaime runs his fingers over her nose from bridge to tip, daubing it unevenly with the mud mask. Brienne is about to object when he drops his still clean thumb to her lips. For what seems like the longest time, he brushes it over her mouth, light as a feather, as if curious; and all the while Brienne's heart skitters and thuds in her chest. How the movement of a single thumb can hypnotise is beyond her, but she is caught and she doesn't appear to be alone in it. Yet Jaime recovers first, a slow grin appearing when he tilts his head back slightly to catch her gaze. "Now, where do you want me to put your underwear?" he suddenly asks, and is gone. 

Brienne stands there for a full ten seconds, touching her lips herself, unsure of what has just happened, before what Jaime actually said registers. 

_"Jaime!"_ she shouts, bolting out of the bathroom after him.

 


	2. Fourteen Hours After Coffee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for Mikki. Thank you for the fandom goodness! :)
> 
> I must also send my heartiest hugs and thanks to RoseHeart, who is my beta, a source of support in many other ways, and a very good friend. And further greetings to Nurdles as well.
> 
> Disclaimer: I own it not.

 

THE LANNISTER CARD - FOURTEEN HOURS AFTER COFFEE

 

 He can feel a cool draught from the window playing over his back, so he abandons the second packet of crisps and leans over to push down on the window frame. It makes little difference, though the dull thump of old, damp wood catches Brienne's attention in the other room. "Are you OK out there?"

 "Fine," Jaime replies, stealing just a moment to smile idiotically at himself in the dark kitchen. Then he picks up the dish and takes the few steps needed to the bedroom, and leans casually against the doorjamb.

 _Well, today_ has _turned out to be interesting._

"How's it going in here?"

 "It isn't working," she frowns, not sparing him a single glance, just staring down at the remote in her hands and repeatedly jabbing at button after button.

He watches Brienne kneeling on the floor in front of the screen she has just plugged in. The blue light plays over her skin, the folds of his shirt on her, undone, casting pale, flickering shadows over her body, accentuating the lines of her that he has only just come to know more closely than he'd thought he ever would. "I think you should dress like that all the time, Brienne. Though I'm not sure why you're bothering."

 She almost snorts at him, whilst pressing one more button determinedly. "There are no curtains out there yet."

 "Brienne," he teases, "there are no curtains in _here_."

 "Ah," she breathes, in response to a change in the flickering light. But then she looks up at Jaime, if only for the briefest moment, her eyes skittering away as soon as they reach him, as if in sudden timidity. Her words, however, are wry. "And when people start rock-chimneying up the eight inch gap between that window and the building next door, I'll start worrying about it."

 The blank brick wall which can be seen outside her bedroom only proves her right, so Jaime says no more, quite content to see her chewing on her plump lower lip as she reads the swiftly growing list of available channels. Her eyes shift back to him, this time at least dropping a little before she stares at the screen again, her eyes narrowing. "What is that, Jaime?"

 He knows damned well what she's talking about, so naturally he points his empty wrist vaguely in the direction of his slightly stirring cock, somewhat bemused at there still being some life in it yet. "This? I thought you'd been introduced earlier. I seem to remember there being some introducing. More than once."

 There is something impossibly endearing in the way she gapes at him in response. "Are you going to be like this all the time now?" she says. "And you know I was asking about the dish."

 "It's a dish," Jaime shrugs. "There are crisps in it."

 "No, Jaime!" Brienne protests, even as he steps closer. "We only got the bed this afternoon!"

 "And we have already road-tested it to the point of near-destruction," he says, dropping the bowl to the floor beside her and climbing onto the bed. He flops down onto his stomach and hangs his head over the edge, reaching down to grab a crisp, putting it into his mouth with a flourish. "If it serves, Technical Specialist Tarth, I will try to contain the feared crumb menace," he attempts to mumble formally around the snack, sliding his right arm across soft, rucked covers to rest at the back of Brienne's shoulder blades.

 "You best had, Lieutenant Lannister," she says softly, turning her face to him. "But no snacking, except during 'The Bloody Crown.'"

 "Deal," Jaime agrees, and she smiles at him. Something catches in his chest at the sight of her, the pale scarring of surgeries and grafts cast into shadow and her eyes bright in that band of undamaged flesh which mark the very last moment he was unmaimed. "Yet my hand for your eyes," he whispers. "Still the best deal I ever made."

 For a few seconds, Brienne seems to struggle to speak, her soft mouth silently beginning to form words that never come. Instead she simply gazes at him with an aching sadness. Jaime won't have it and presses his lips to the cotton covering her upper arm. "How many times do I have to say it, Brienne? I jumped in there. My choice." And then he allows himself the kind of smile that until today he only ever used to cause her to blush, unable to even conceive that Brienne could hold feelings for him that equalled his own for her. Heated and almost predatory, he sees her automatically start to pretend it isn't there, so he adds, "Besides, I truly think I lucked out on that deal. Especially now that I've seen how you look at me when we're fucking. That really is beautiful."

 Those eyes are now wide in shock and her skin set to glowing, even in this light, and Brienne turns away again, still unable to speak. She doesn't seem to notice the screen finally burst into life, some ad for a mid-range winter vehicle filling the room with the standard grey skies and sombre strings music. Jaime barely notes it himself, instead nuzzling his cheek against Brienne's arm. "You aren't embarrassed, are you?"

 "No," she murmurs, lifting her left hand and gently brushing it through his hair but once. Then she moves around slightly so that she can look straight at him. She appears to settle uncomfortably back onto her thighs, and Jaime hopes she isn't feeling very sore. Yet if she is, she makes no show of it, just kissing his brow and saying, "Thank you." Then her eyes are level with his and they are moderately stern. "Though if I am, I'd like to point out that even today, you've been trying to embarrass me since the moment I woke up. Since _before_ I did."

 "I told you, Brienne. I didn't search through the box, once I realized what was in there. I might have spent some time staring, I'll admit, but really, you have the most practical taste in underwear I've ever heard of." He bumps his nose against hers in soft challenge. "I saw your sports bras plenty when we were working together, remember?"

 "It wasn't my under-" Brienne's quick mutter, almost made to herself, slams to a halt. They stare at each other, stock still for a second, every muscle in them both tensed and set to a hair-trigger.

_If it wasn't her underwear she was worried about me seeing, it was...something else._

Jaime is the first to move, rolling and flinging himself bodily across the bed; stretching out to pull open the drawer in the bedside cabinet. Underwear starts to spill forth from it even as Brienne, with a wordless cry of protest, throws herself onto the bed next to him. They end up close to wrestling each other, but Jaime pays it next to no mind, all of his senses bent on feeling anything as his fingers scratch noisily over the wooden grain of the drawer's baseboard.

 "Jaime!" Brienne shouts, even when his hand brushes something hard and cool. Somehow they've ended up with him on his back, his arm twisted awkwardly so that he can reach his target. Brienne straddles his thighs, her face as pugnacious as Jaime has ever seen it.

 "Too late," he tells her quietly, suddenly too aware that this might be a step too far for her, even coming from him. He pulls his hand from its hiding place and shakes his arm out, easing the pain in his shoulder. _If she doesn't want me to see, so be it._  "Do you trust me, Brienne?"

 "Of course I do," she says, remaining wary.

 "As I do you. I don't need to see it, you know. You can say no." Something in Jaime actually rails against this, telling him he absolutely does, but he doesn't listen to it, unwilling to let his old drives kick in again. So instead he just waits as Brienne's face swings solemnly back and forth, between himself and the drawer. 

 In the end, she tilts her head to one side with a resigned grunt. "I suppose you would see it some day, most likely." At that, she leans across the bed, over him. Jaime spends a few seconds watching the light from the screen play through the thin cotton of his shirt as it falls from her sides: a homely cocoon of warmth and shadow that he would, right now, happily choose to stay in forever.

 But then she is back where she was, looking down at him, and Jaime feels a weight drop onto his chest. He picks it up and stares at it curiously. Hardly wider than his thumb, and not as long as his hand, the coolness to the touch is easily understood now. "Is this plated?"

 "Steel."

 He finds himself fascinated by the uneven surface, a series of gentle undulations swirling around the length of it distorting his reflection in the semi-darkness. He wonders if they make things better for her. "Why would you be embarrassed about this? This is quite," he rests it across the weight of his palm, "remarkably elegant." It is heavier than its size would reflect too, he thinks, though his experience in the area is worse than scant. "And costly, I suspect."

 "For me, if not for you," Brienne shyly admits, unable to resist the slight jibe. But then, as if to justify her owning something she has the utter right to have in any case, words start to stutter out of her. "Jaime, I didn't ever think that I would be in a...," she flutters a hand between weakly them, but Jaime does not pity _her_ for it. He pities every damned fool who ever insulted her, for if he had believed he knew far better before today, he is now fortunate enough to be certain of it. He rubs his scarred arm against a very delicately freckled, if large knee, and it seems to settle her a touch, but she continues nonetheless. "It is also true that I thought you would laugh at me, Jaime...I...," she stops, and stares at him in outright astonishment, "wait, are you picturing me _using_ it?"

 "I am," Jaime concedes quite freely, not at all troubled by the idea which appears to have extremely recently taken up what he hopes might be a permanent sort of sweet residence in the corner of his mind. Her lone sofa is not large, and though he will never concede to her that it needs so many cushions, it is very comfortable. He has spent enough time on it to know that to be true, even if his throwing the occasional bit of soft furnishing onto the floor has brought about the odd minor dispute. Yet if he should ever happen upon her making herself even _more_ comfortable there, he would hardly have the reason to make an issue of it. In fact, he is fairly sure he would defend her right to do so. Possibly to point of death, were he to be given the task right now.

 He is about to tell her, even whilst the memory of short, alluringly womanly gasps and strong thighs cradling his hips with a gentleness he has never quite known threatens to overwhelm him. But then his thumb brushes over the end of her toy. "A button," he mutters happily, and presses it, feeling the fascinating little item hum into life in his palm. If Brienne begins to edge towards her own peculiar sort of mortification at this, Jaime is too wrapped up in his own curiosity to even want to take advantage of the moment. “It’s like a phone gone mad!” he chuckles, touching the ripples and bumps with his thumb as the sensation of its vibrating plays on his skin.

 “Oh,” Brienne says from above him, as if in the throes of a sharp revelation. He looks up at her in question, and sees her shedding that brief bout of shyness like water, a quiet curiosity of her own taking its place. She gestures at his hand, her eyebrows gathering in the way they always have when she is trying to work something out. “Jaime, have you never…?”

 Though she cannot seem to bear to fully word the question, Jaime understands it well enough and he feels like a charlatan; he may be no innocent, but there is much that might be considered normal that he has obviously missed. “Never,” he says, his voice rueful. “There was never really the time. I had to listen in case-“

 “In case you needed to head for the flowerbeds,” Brienne whispers, her voice tight with either disbelief or pity.

 It could be both, but Jaime likes, nor wants, any of it. “Yes. Don't you dare laugh at me about it, Brienne. And no telling anyone, either. I do have a reputation to uphold.”

 Brienne simply shakes her head. “I wouldn't,” she says, a gentle smile on her face as her mood shifts and she lifts her hand to cup his. “You can change the speed of it, did you know? You just have to twist the button, instead of pressing it.”

 He hadn’t, but Jaime doesn’t move for a few seconds, struck vertiginously by the care in her long fingers, by the fact that on today, of all days, she will still help him, despite so much more being new to her. But then he brushes the tiny control, and finds resistance. The resulting grin he sends her way is full of lazy insinuation. “It might already be on the strongest setting. I can’t fathom why. Were you thinking of anybody in particular at the time, I wonder?”

 Brienne covers her face with both hands, though he can see her smiling behind them. And it leaves her stomach conveniently free. Tentatively, Jaime holds out the toy, and brushes it gently around Brienne’s navel. Her reaction is instant; her arms flying back, her fingers gripping his calves, her back arching and the slowest, most delightful moan Jaime has ever had the privilege of hearing streaming from her mouth, laden with want. As it tails off, he can’t resist saying more, feeling the increasing thickness of his voice in his throat. “Were you thinking of me? Maybe doing this?” he asks, sliding the shining tip up to a pink nipple, seeing it pucker yet further as Brienne’s thighs tighten against his, her head falling back and her ribs quaking visibly as each breath becomes more needed than the one before. By the time he has attended to both darkening buds, as is only proper, her face has lolled forward again, her lips slack, her eyes almost shut, but still burning bright from behind long eyelashes. “I’ll take that as a yes,” Jaime says, his tone undeniably deeper whilst he travels silver over pale skin, over collarbone and neck and rib.

 Brienne moves so freely above him, her reactions far greater than a little earlier this evening, when she had come apart with soft, urgent gasps in his ear after taking him in for the second time. Her heel had kicked into the back of his thigh; a silent request, pulling him deeper into her heat even as it quivered about him, driving him to thrust yet harder. But if that had given Jaime a glimpse of Brienne the innocent, the unworldly girl who never thought a man could give her anything more than his spite, this is Brienne the woman; still artless and honest, but more knowing of herself. And when Jaime discovers a spot at her side, just above her waist, that sees her rock slightly forward and grip his shoulders with a low keen, he finds a complete openness in her gaze that makes him sure which one he prefers. If he had thought wanting her again so soon impossible, if he believed himself too old to ache for her so much, his body as well as his mind seems set on proving him wrong. For a few seconds, he considers simply fucking her again right then, if she will have him, but the idea that she might indeed be sore inside calms the urge for the moment, even if he desperately wants to be inside her when she is so much like what he now knows to be Brienne. They have only been together for less than a handful of hours, his insistence that he lay beside her on the bed after its delivery, testing it for size should the remote chance of her ever having company come to pass, swiftly tumbling into becoming a needily grasped fact. She has to take the lead for a spell, he thinks, until she is truly comfortable having him, and given that he has just found the same shivering reaction to the vibrator on the other side of her body, who is he to complain about it?

 He shoves his want to one side as well as he can, and concentrates instead on watching the flicker of Brienne’s muscles in shadow whilst she shifts her hips minutely in a beat over his thighs; no unsubtle rubbing against him for his girl, just a genuine flowing of her body with sensation. He lifts the toy away from her, suddenly wanting to see if it works differently when it isn’t touching skin. For perhaps a whole minute, she is much the same, the soft cotton seemingly no bar to her pleasure. But then she straightens up, her look one of query even as her breath remains a patter of shallow sighs and she wets her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Jaime,” she says, the huskiness of her words hypnotic. “Are you picturing me using this in your shirt?”

 “I wasn't,” Jaime says, certain that if he grins anymore, his face will start hurting from the effort. “I am now. Looks good to me.” His minds races through a number of very entertaining scenarios, and doesn’t take too long to settle on a firm favourite. _In my car. In the passenger seat. In just my shirt. Making herself very comfortable. A thousand times yes._  “Though I don’t think I’ll ever drive truly safely again,” he adds, and Brienne settles into a sort of bemusement, one hand absently scratching at her scarred cheek. Despite her steadying arousal, that she doubts herself the material of any man’s fantasies begins to sing out from every part of her. Jaime has every intention of laying that issue to rest, and seeing as how his happens to be the mind which is rapidly and happily churning out a long list of the things he’s wanted to see or do for some considerable time, he decides to throw another one out, just for good measure. “Did you, by any chance,” he says, holding up her toy between them, “bring this entirely charming item with you when we were on active duty?”

 That catches Brienne completely off-guard, cutting any creeping misgivings to the quick. "And now I'm back in _uniform_?" she laughs, plucking her vibrator away from him. "Of course I didn't, Jaime!"

 "A pity," he says, acknowledging their unspoken, shared awareness that there is no military camp in the world where anything so personal could be kept completely hidden for too long.

 Brienne's free hand caresses his chin, the lightest brush of a thing. "I know what you're doing, Jaime. Thank you."

 "You needn't thank me for thoroughly enjoying myself, Brienne." If his smile is near as stupid as hers is now, they would barely be able to scrape up half a fool between them, but at least it would be a beautiful one. They look at one another quietly, taking each other in, until naturally enough, Jaime's eyes settle upon Brienne's hand and her toy, resting as they are high on her thigh, silver pointing suggestively at the trimmed, neat hair close by. A tug of memory takes him back five years to when he had first seen that part of her, again bathed in blue light, albeit darker, filtered through heavy plastic.

 "What, Jaime?" Brienne calls him back almost before he is gone, but it doesn't make any difference, for he carries much of that day with him always.

 "I was just remembering the first time I saw you naked."

 "The tent," Brienne breathes, before appearing to revisit the past herself. If her thoughts are anything like his often are, she will be thinking of them standing toe to toe, water streaming over them both as they threw out insults and harsh truths aplenty, both of them gripping harshly bristled brushes as if they were lifelines. Or possibly weapons. "Things were very different then," she eventually says, her left hand dropping to cup his hip fondly.

 "I wouldn't say all that different, Brienne. Didn't you notice that by the time you finished scrubbing my back, I had a raging hard-on?"

 The remarkable and pleasing contradictions in her leap to the fore once more, as Brienne, next to naked and sat astride his legs as comfortable as could be, appears to be scandalized and confused at the very thought. "No! Did you? But we were arguing. About how it was your fault." That is said with near as much stubbornness as she had shown way back then, and Jaime can only love her more for it. "Remember?" she adds, quite fervently.

 "I have always chosen not to," Jaime replies, pouring nonchalance into every syllable.

 He watches her mull that over, reworking that incident from her own viewpoint with a constant pursing of her lips until she seems satisfied with the new information. "Is that why you hid in the corner with your back to me?" she asks. "I thought you were sulking."

 "Me? Sulking? Never!" Jaime laughs. "But Brienne, if we're heading down that path, can we at least go with 'brooding'? It sounds a lot better. As for my cock," he continues, again finding her knee with his stump, "I was bloody confused about it at the time, but have to admit, things have become much clearer since." He reaches to her thigh now, the fine sheen of recent sweat there not unpleasant as he stretches to wrap his fingers over her right hand and that which it holds. "I really didn't think this day could get any better, sweetling."

 Brienne stares at him for a short while, quite deliberately, at all of him; unashamed, but puzzled, as if his being there is untrue, or that he has somehow carelessly misplaced himself in her bed. But whatever is going on underneath that untidy hair of hers come to nothing, for she slowly leans across and over him again. Jaime hears her vibrator drop back into the drawer and it being shut. Then her face is above his, lit softly in happiness. "Maybe a bit later? _Maybe."_

 "That's good enough for me," he says, tugging her closer for a slow kiss. She tastes of mint and of herself, and in spite of how immersive her touch is, Jaime finds himself mumbling, "Do you have a spare toothbrush?" against her.

 This rare burst of practicality and manners on his part sees Brienne pushing herself off him with a smile, twisting away and settling next to him on her knees. "You know I do, Jaime. I buy more toothbrushes for you than I do for myself."  

 "Does that mean I'll be sleeping on that sofa again? It's comfortable, but way too short. If that is the toothbrush price, I'm not sure I'm willing to pay it."

 "Not tonight," she assures him, pulling him up to her side. She kisses him again, though this time it is just a graze of one mouth on another, because her attention is swiftly caught by the screen on the floor. "Come on," she tells him. "It's started. I think we've almost missed humming the music. I know how much you like annoying me with it." Jaime stays where he is, content to see her laying herself down as he had earlier, not one hint of shyness left in the way she throws her legs out along the mattress, or even in the slight twisting of his shirt having left her arse bare. He rather thinks he would prefer to spend the next hour looking at that, but the night is getting much cooler so he leans down to the floor, grabbing the sole successful blanket escapee from their time together earlier on. Then he joins her, though his covering them both is slightly awkward, given that he has to use his stump. Normally, Brienne would notice and help without comment, but she is already absorbed in 'The Bloody Crown'. There is something unendingly captivating in the way she refuses to look away from the screen when it's on, wrapped up in the world unfolding before her.

 Jaime gives a salutary hum of the first few notes of the show's theme as he shimmies more deeply into the bed. Then he turns to Brienne, mumbling onto her shoulder, "For some reason, I'm less interested in the show this week."

 Brienne smiles and does little to hide it, but her answer is whispered, yet stern. "It's alright for you, Mr 'I've-Read-The-Books'." Her arm wanders out in front of him, blindly searching across the carpet for the bowl she had so strongly disputed against earlier. Having expected little else, Jaime slides it closer to her, just about managing to rein in his urge to say something smug about the choice.

 "Well, I _have_ read them," he says without apology, thinking back to the months they spent purely existing in a stifling desert camp. Tyrion's three books had seemed like a terrible brotherly offering at first, but being in the military involves a staggering amount of boredom, and Jaime had found his free time fairly eaten up by tales of the knights of old and wars and the like. At his side, Brienne just about manages to find her mouth with one of his favourite snacks. He nudges her. "Careful. Think of the _crumbs_."

 Brienne swallows the crisp before she sticks her tongue out, her tendency towards politeness even now taming the rare bursts of childishness in which she will allow herself to indulge, and that Jaime seems lucky enough to be the only one to see. She adds a quick and wholly sarcastic _'Well, I_ have _read them'_ before she is swept away again. There are just a few minutes to the first ads, and in truth Jaime spends all of them watching Brienne rather than the screen. Her reactions are endlessly fascinating to him. They are as honest as she is when she is out in the world and having been constantly on the blunt end of some of her bleaker gazes in the past, he doesn't really want to know what she'd like to happen to Lord  Hearthbroke.

 She faces him as an animated scouring pad starts to, utterly bizarrely, sing the praises a of bakery chain in the break. "And why didn't I get to read them, Jaime?" Brienne asks, trying to be perfectly serious. A long-term disagreement made something new by the feel of her bare legs next to his.

 "Oh, Brienne," Jaime says, tickling her ankle with his toes. "As if I sent them back to Tyrion just to annoy you."

 Brienne props herself up on one elbow. Her other arm snakes around Jaime's waist and back. "You made me walk _with_ you to the FPO to _watch_ you get them franked and posted to him!" she says, barely managing to maintain a semblance of her proper dourness.

 Jaime mirrors her movement, only to gather her closer to him with his right forearm, surely leaving Brienne in no doubt that he wants her, though he omits mentioning that out loud. "Maybe I did, but you could have made the effort to read them since."

 Brienne gasps softly, her chest pressing into his, her face filling most Jaime's field of vision. She steadies herself. "By the time our tour of duty ended the show had started, and I was doomed to watch it every week with an insufferable, complaining know-it-all."

 "My complaining is both humorous and easily sufferable. It's hardly my fault they're doing it wrong," Jaime points out.

 "In your opinion," she huffs against his cheek.

 Jaime rolls onto his back, bringing her with him, and brushes the end of his nose lightly against hers in challenge. "Which is clearly right."

 "Book snob," she whispers against his lips.

 "Illiterate peasant."

 It's the first thing that pops into his mind, and takes Jaime as much by surprise as it does Brienne. "Illiterate?" she laughs with him. "Peasant?"

 He tilts his head backwards towards the screen. "I figure I'm just getting into the mood of the piece."

 "Then I think we should stop your mouth," Brienne says. She kisses him then, inexpertly, yet as deeply and soundly as she knows how, only to lift her head when Jaime is certain the world has shrunk to the weight of her across his chest and the feel of her lips on his own. "And watch the show."

 "I can think of better things we could be doing," Jaime grunts, instantly cursing himself that all of his good intentions of having Brienne set the pace have gone to the dogs inside of half an hour. "Though the show is fine," he adds, the words sounding weak, even to his own ears.

 Brienne stares down at him, and there is another brief wash of that feeling of wrongness on her features; that she does not deserve him. Knowing the opposite, Jaime slowly reaches up with his empty wrist to guide it over every precious, mended scar there, and it is enough. "I've told you, Brienne."

 "I know," she says, taking a deep breath. "Jaime, could we..."

 Her voice peters out to nothing. She is unable to voice her wants. "Slower, gentler?" Jaime guesses, and to the surprise then evident in her, he replies, "It's your first night, Brienne. Yes. We can try."

 She relaxes then. He can almost feel it run through Brienne as her gaze flicks back over her shoulder to that drawer of hers, to him, and then to the screen. "We are missing it," she says softly, even contentedly. "And I suppose we _could_ watch the repeat tomorrow," she muses, tipping her mouth to his.

 "Brienne," Jaime says to her skin. "We always _do_."

 She moves from him then, the stretch of a long arm needed to pick up the remote from the place she had dropped it. Brienne decisively hits the off button, plunging them into a sharp darkness, the only light at all coming from the doorway, a pale oblong standing sombrely in the corner of the room. Brienne feels her way back into Jaime's arms, and whether it is the darkness or the banishing of her doubts that lends her courage, she then says what he had found easier to tell her, in the brighter light of the late afternoon, in this very bed.

 "I love you."

 


End file.
